Manolo González wants to discuss his situation with Monchi

“I’ll have to speak with Monchi,” Manolo González said, referring any discussion about his situation to a conversation with the sporting director. The coach stressed: “It’s a situation I’m not going to discuss at a press conference.” He added that any decision would be for the club to make and would not depend on him alone.

His comments reflected a difficult spell, but he did not present his position as being under immediate threat. Asked whether his job was at stake the following day in Santander, he said he did not have that impression, either from the dressing room or the club. He nevertheless called the situation “delicate, complicated” and said any discussions should first take place internally, after the disappointment of the match had settled.

Manolo González also outlined what he sees as his team’s problem: a sudden drop in performance during matches. “The feeling is that we make ourselves small,” he said, adding that the system had not changed and that he did not understand why the team had stopped pressing the build-up. In his view, it was not a lack of intensity so much as a fear of losing an advantage already earned.

He explained that assessment by describing a match in which his team had taken the lead after a first half he considered fairly good. After the goal, he regretted, the players stopped doing what they had been doing. The substitutions, he pointed out, had involved attacking players replacing other attacking players. He also felt the team had managed its actions well before 0-1, but less effectively afterwards, and had not finished its attacks well enough.

The coach ruled out refereeing as the main explanation: “We let the match get away from us.” He said he did not want to talk about referees this year, except in a situation such as the one involving Mallorca last season. He also refused to blame the squad: responsibility, in his view, is shared, and saying the players are not good enough would be neither fair nor consistent with how he conducts himself.

That diagnosis came with a call to manage the closing stages better. Manolo González said he had reviewed what happened after the 90th minute and acknowledged that the responsibility did not rest with the players alone. He spoke of the need to prevent dangerous transitions and avoid conceding late, while keeping control of the ball and making the most of attacking opportunities. He also felt the team had let three points slip and that its position in the standings could be significantly affected.

With the 10th matchday approaching, he distinguished between performance and results: in his view, the team had felt better in its recent matches, but that had not produced results. He said he would keep working “until the last day” and that his priority was to see Espanyol where it deserved to be. He also said he wanted to win more and believed his team deserved more points, while acknowledging that such thoughts were useless unless the team stopped letting more points slip away.

Manolo González described the next match as an opportunity to win rather than a final. He said the squad list would be the same as against Atlético, since the same players were available as the previous week despite the absences of Kike García and Jofre. He expects his team to control the opponent’s repeated attacks and avoid individual errors. His aim, he summed up, is to find an effective way to attack with few passes without giving up possession.